


another thing to fall

by dissembler



Category: Another Country (1984)
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Public Schools, Schoolboy Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23218432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dissembler/pseuds/dissembler
Summary: Judd gets somewhat turned around when trying to see how the enemy ticks.
Relationships: Tommy Judd/Jim Menzies
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	another thing to fall

Cricket seems to bring this place to a halt in the summer terms, forcing every boy out into the sun to play and burn. Doubtless to start them on a path to the tolerance of brisk heat that they’ll need when subjugating the poor native peoples of some snatched land. The parents do at least pack their sons off with sunhats at the first, in September, which, unless the parents are prescient and the hats the right shape for the eventual summer season, sometimes get a chap verbally slaughtered the moment he steps out of doors. 

Menzies has no sunhat; his hair shines a lighter gold in the sunlight and the white of his summer suit is blinding as he stands off the pitch, keeping all the boys under his watchful eye. Judd, without – just for the moment, school shop for orange juice – Bennett, veers away from his intended path to go and stand next to him. 

From beside him, he studies Menzies: the juxtaposition of how they dress has always amused him, especially when the rest of the men are in their morning suits. Even with Bennett when he’s in tails makes him smile inwardly at the pretence, and then with the prefects and Gods who never seem to shed it; they, boys dressing as grown men and he, a boy dressed, as Bennett had told him once, like a destitute professor preaching free lectures to bored rustics at some public library in the country. But, he thinks, Bennett misses the _why_ : the first time he’d begun to darn his own jumper in the dormitories it’d drawn stares and even admonishment because one shouldn’t mend, one should replace or one is thought to be poor. And after that the ratty jumper had become somewhat of a rebellion in itself. It’s also why he tries his hardest and every opportunity to resist cricket whites when Bennett and the rest of them seem to relish the opportunity. The working classes don’t have the time for cricket and neither does he. His shirt and trousers are perfectly suitable for all weathers and he can add the jumper and jacket if he gets chilly, never mind that the linen would be cooler now. 

Menzies doesn’t move or even address him, but Judd is fairly certain that all that means is that he’s waiting, waiting and working out how he thinks this will go. Judd opts for what he imagines should be unexpected.

“Do you think, Menzies,” he says, in the tone of innocent inquiry that he’s copied off Bennett, “that your dark arts of persuasion would extend to selling the proverbial sand to the proverbial arab?”

There’s no audible sigh, but Menzies’ narrow shoulders move with one as he glances to Judd, squinting at him in the sunshine. He quickly turns back to the game and says, “What would you know of my persuasive powers? I’ve never been able to persuade you of anything.”

Judd smiles at the compliment it likely wasn’t meant as. “Well, I’m different,” he says, blunt. “But Farcical was taken in, clearly, and I’m sure it’s you who’s steered Barclay and Delahay…”

“I think you overestimate me, Judd,” Menzies tells him, glancing distractedly at him as some shouts on the field draw his attention away. He strides off with a muttered apology and Judd rejoins the path to wait for Bennett. 

Guy hands him his orange juice in a silence that speaks something Judd can’t quite understand but is sure he’ll find out about soon.

–––––––––––––––––

Bennett says, “It’s just, well. You’ve been looking at the bastard the way I used to look at James.”

They’re in the library, the blessedly cool, permanently February, library. Bennett is at his usual spot on the window seat, and Judd is trying half-heartedly to read.

Whatever twaddle he’d expected from Bennett, it hadn’t been that. “Have I hell,” he retorts because honestly, what utter _rot_. “And anyway how would _you_ know how _you_ looked at James?”

Bennett gives him one of the arrogant, condescending looks he normally reserves for Wharton or Fowler. “Well, you see, these window panes are reflective, and you, for your part, were never remiss in telling me how silly I looked.”

Judd looks to Lenin for patience. “I am not looking at Menzies in any way near the way you looked at Harcourt. If I look at him, which I’m not sure I even do all that often, I am sure it’s only to see how he ticks. He is the enemy at the end of the day.”

“You see, you don’t look at him like an enemy. You don’t look at him the same way you look at Fowler, disdain hardly hidden–”

He shrugs. “He’s a different sort of enemy.”

Bennett says, “Ye-es,” unconvincingly. “But you look at him like a man fascinated.”

“Nonsense.” _If_ he’s interested, it’s in the fact that, as he’s had years to observe the workings of the ludicrous bourgeoisie boys that this place and then Oxford or Cambridge will turn out into the civil service, Menzies is the only one who’s shocked him. When he’d laughed about ‘the makings of a politician’ he hadn’t expected to be proven right quite like he had been. It has utterly nothing to do with… with whatever it is Bennett’s implying.

When the door opens, for a moment he’s almost glad that he might be spared more of Bennett’s insight but then he sees the boy at the doorframe. To Devenish’s shocked face both he and Bennett simultaneously shout: “OUT.”

“I say, chaps, this is a common room, you know.” Devenish is flushed pink and still in his cricket whites; doubtless he’s come for the same reason they have: escaping the oppressive heat. It’s really only right that they deny him.

“No it isn’t,” he says shortly. “It’s a library.”

Devenish starts to flap, face clouding over like a child on the brink of a tantrum. It isn’t any big surprise. “Common room,” he splutters. “As in ‘room that is common’. You know that’s what I meant.”

“It’s a library,” Judd tells him, glancing over to find Bennett eager to jump in. He smirks at the pages of _Das Kapital_ when he turns back to it. “In fact it’s _my_ library and as Hon. Sec. of it, I want you to leave.”

“I’ve just as much right to be here as you do.” He can’t see Devenish anymore, but he’s known the fellow long enough to know that he’s pouting.

Bennett, he sees out of the corner of his eye, throws back his head and laughs, clapping his hands together. “No you don’t. Do bugger off, Devenish.”

To that Judd thinks he hears Devenish stomp his feet. “I shall find–”

“Oh do,” Bennett says, and Judd whips round to look at him. “ _Do_ go get him. I should like to see that.”

Devenish does go; Judd hears his footsteps recede as he stands and leans against the table. He glares at Bennett. Eventually he starts, “I don’t suppose you’re going to be much help when–”

“Judd. Bennett.” Menzies stops just inside the room with Devenish in tow, and Judd feels Bennett’s gaze fix resolutely to him: _personae non gratae_ must not, it seems, even be seen. For his part, Menzies seems to take one look at Judd’s face and Bennett’s ignoring him and decide that no preamble is needed. “Come now,” he says, about to repeat what’s fast becoming his catch-phrase: “we must try to coexist.”

Judd folds his arms over his chest. “No.”

Devenish looks rather prematurely triumphant but Judd doesn’t overly care. Devenish was easily bribed, but he’s harmless enough; if ever he is to be bad it will likely be more from omission than activity: he is not what matters here to Judd. But Menzies, mild though he had always seemed before – in Menzies, Judd sees a flicker of intelligence beyond the simple step-by-step life. This school is full of boys who leave behind them an oil slick, sliding their way through and greasing up their elders, but they at least are easy to spot. Menzies is far more subtle; what he says seems so reasonable when he says it.

“What the school giveth, the school may taketh away.” His tone is light, unchanged, but there’s a threat played as a friendly warning, a hint.

Judd raises an eyebrow, unswayed. “You mean what the school giveth _you_ may taketh away.”

Menzies favours him with a rueful smile. “Of course I wouldn’t want to, Judd; where else would you spend your time? I’ve no intention to foist you upon the juniors.”

Devenish makes his impatience known with a rather snotty: “They have to let me sit here, Jim,” and Judd catches Bennett’s glance as he raises his eyebrow at the first name. Menzies never seems like he should be a Jim, Judd thinks; it just doesn’t fit. This place is full of stupid surnames, but at least most of them are easily pronounced; he remembers their first term and Menzies’ brave face as he tried to explain some obsolete Scottish letter to all the boys who saw the name on his trunk and gave it a go. 

“Donald, are you quite sure you’d even want to be here? There are other rooms.” Donald Devenish, on the other hand, is a cruelty that the boy quite deserves.

“That’s not the point! They’re hogging this room and they’ve no right to. I ought to–”

Menzies cuts him off with a terse, “ _Devenish_.” Judd thinks it’s the most inflection he’s had since he came in and he’s giving Devenish a rather hard look.

Devenish whines: “I just don’t see why you’re taking their side,” and Judd laughs. Honestly, these boys.

“He isn’t,” he says, matter-of-fact. “This is merely a concession to a vanquished enemy. Do you expect our thanks, Menzies?”

Menzies turns his head to face Judd – he’s been sideways, his back to Bennett, as if he expects to need to hold Judd or Devenish or both back in short order – and he seems close to speaking rather shortly again to either of them but resists.

“Come on, Devenish.” Menzies’ tone is placid once more. “You won’t have time to lounge in libraries anyway when you’re a God.” 

Bennett, at the window, flinches and Menzies notices, looks for a moment almost regretful. It comes to nothing: they leave, Devenish spluttering slightly under Menzies’ guiding hand at his shoulder. Menzies, comparatively, has rather small hands, but then he is rather small, narrow-shouldered. 

When they’re gone, Judd pulls out the chair and drops into it with a huff. Bennett says nothing, but he does it rather loudly.

Judd gives it a moment and then gives in, the least he can do to soothe Guy after Menzies’ God comment. “Oh, go on and say something then.”

Bennett does his innocent blinking. “I’ve utterly nothing to say,” he says.

“Gosh, I’d better alert the papers.”

“Only that,” Bennett shifts to lounge on the window-sill, assessing him with his chin in his palm. “Well. I wasn’t sure if the two of you – Menzies and you, that is – were going to fight or, well…”

He rolls his eyes, he can guess what ‘or, well’ means. Bennett still refuses to believe in the absolute nature of his attraction to _girls_. “Thankfully neither. Besides, you weren’t even looking at him.”

Bennett shrugs, which Judd would’ve thought to have been a difficult feat in his current position, but that really only serves to make him even more languid and decadent. “No, but you were,” he purrs. “It was all there in the man’s voice anyway, the heavy way he said your name, all those pauses and hesitations.”

“I didn’t notice him hesitating.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You should know that there really is a lot a sigh can say.”

Judd imagines there probably is, if like Bennett one is an incurable romantic. “Is there?” he asks sarcastically.

“Oh absolutely. Menzies’ sigh to you, incidentally, had an air of ‘take me now’.”

He feels himself go red and scowls. “Must you?”

“Oh what’s the point in using doublespeak for it, I’d put money on my being right. You’ve an in there. Or do socialists frown on using sex in counterintelligence?” Bennett rolls himself off the sill into standing and comes over to swipe Lenin up into his hands and prance away again. “If you’re worried it’ll be strange don’t be: I’ve decided it probably isn’t that different, with girls or boys, it’s still a hand. Or a mouth or—”

“Bennett!” He stands to snatch the bust back and sees Menzies is in the doorframe, face pink and eyes wide. He looks at Judd for a long time and then drags his gaze to Bennett.

“Guy,” he says and the boy in question turns away to the window. “Bennett! Oh for God’s sake.” 

Menzies turns back to Tommy, still flushed, a strand of his hair has come free of the Brylcreem he doubtless uses. He takes a deep breath and quite visibly pulls himself together, and then, coolly, he says: “Judd, be so kind as to inform Bennett that, as we do not live in the Regency era, his cut direct is fairly useless and particularly so when he is the only one doing it. We’ll all have to live together next term, and as a prefect he is going to have to speak to me at some point.”

Judd nods. “Anything else?”

Hesitating, – and oh blast Bennett, now he’s noticing these things and making assumptions he’s no idea about – Menzies hovers between leaving and saying more. Eventually he does say, “You ought to let Devenish use this place sometimes. Take Lenin for a little air.”

And then the blighter does try to go. Judd calls after him, “Hang on. I’m hardly going to just let you– You’d have to take the library from me first.”

Menzies turns back at the door and says, quietly: “I don’t want to have to.”

Rather quickly Tommy finds that he wants to cross the space between them, to argue properly rather than remaining at his table removed and scornful and with Lenin loosely in his hand. But he can’t, certainly not with Bennett watching. He curls his fingers around Lenin’s metal throat and says, bitingly, “Oh, I’m sure you’ll manage. Your future in politics will be full of things you don’t want to _have_ to do.”

Menzies sighs. “Just think about it, Judd.”  
  
This time, once they’re alone, Bennett is quick to break his silence. “My God, he’s practically begging for it.”

“Oh, be quiet,” Judd snaps. “You and Harcourt bloody moon at each other across the lawn once or twice and that’s a love that’s meant to be, and now you see my arguing with Menzies and try to boil it all down to thwarted passion.”

It’s infuriating, childish. This obsession with love or more accurately sex they all seem to have, even in the fraught post-Martineu atmosphere. He overhears at meals some of the boys talking about their sweethearts back in the villages, the ones they’ll happily abandon when they go up to Cambridge or Oxford and start partying with town girls they’ll profess love to or thinking about marriage. Marriage which, of course, to them is actually purely economic and legatary but they won’t admit that. 

Bennett looks hurt, pouts at him. “I’m only teasing you. I’m not saying it’s not political, I know you’re taking your stand here while you wait to be able to take your stand in the real world. I don’t really think you and Menzies will– that is I know you like girls. But I don’t think I’m wrong about _him_.” Bennett brightens. “It might be a way to get back at him.”

Tommy feels uncomfortable, as if the oppressive heat is getting to him even in this frigid room. “I can’t concentrate here, I’m going to the river. Don’t let Devenish in.”

Bennett scoffs. “As if I would.”

–––––––––––––––––

For the hour or so he spends pacing by the riverside and all through supper and last post he remains discomfited, angry and not sure at whom. In bed, he waits his customary time, waits for Devenish’s dog to start making its presence known and then gets up to tiptoe through the dorm. Delahay’s tucked up and snoring, so it’s going to be Barclay, Fowler or Menzies on sporadic patrol. He hopes it’s Barclay; if it is, he’ll probably just sack it off again and get Judd to keep the window open for him.

At the library, light shielded as usual by the Daily Worker, he tries to read but he keeps imagining the door opening, and it’s Menzies he imagines walking in.

What happens if Bennett’s right, if Menzies does…? He can’t imagine that. He knows that Delahay has, with Guy, but Menzies never seems earthy enough, his hands are always in his pockets and his hair is always – usually – so perfectly set. There’s none of the tension of violence in him like there is in Fowler, no rigid self-conscious power like Barclay, or sporting fitness like Delahay. No louche ease like Bennett. He exists apart from them, quiet and untouchable. 

“Useless,” Judd tells himself, the air around him and Lenin’s dispassionate stare. He shoves the book closed and stands, tying up his dressing gown and sliding the book and Lenin into his pockets. 

He’s halfway back to bed – though what he means to do there he can’t think, he’ll not be able to sleep – when he sees Menzies coming the other way. 

He tries to hide but it’s too late, he’s right in a shaft of moonlight from the windows and there’s nowhere to hide here anyway, lest he wants to hurl himself out the one open window. 

Menzies’ pace falters when he spots him, but then he picks it up again, stopping four foot or so in front of Judd. “Bit early, isn’t it, for you to be heading back to bed?”

“Bit of a headache,” Judd lies, and Menzies’ usual bland expression melts into minute concern, barely a change, just a softening of his eyes, a downturn to his mouth.

“Shall I wake nurse?” he asks.

“Let the poor woman sleep. I don’t need her fussing over me as if I was four years old.”

Menzies’ face changes incrementally again, his lips turning up slightly. “Look about Devenish–”

“Bennett won’t let him in, and I really do feel like it’s the least I can do with my little power to stop him from trying. As you said, why would he want to be in the presence of–”

“‘Commies and Queers’,” Menzies offers, “as you so charmingly put it?”

“Quite.”

The half-smile is still there on Menzies’ face, but neither of them move from their safe distance. 

“Judd, you must know banning him isn’t the way to affect your goal.”

He’s not sure he likes how _indulgent_ Menzies sounds. He says, “Well it’s not the way you would go about it, but I’d much rather be honest than underhand,” and there we are, the smile that’d only half been there in the first place retreats.

Menzies presses his lips together and then shakes his head. “Alright,” he says, “I’m going to speak honestly now and like as not you’ll loathe me even more for it but, well, one day you’re going to wake up to the realities of the regime you cherish, and I rather think it’ll be a sharp shock.”

Judd snorts. “Yes, I’m sure that is what you think. Anyway, though I ought to hate you the most at the moment it’s Devenish that makes my blood boil.”

“It can’t have been that much of a surprise that he accepted the offer.”

Judd shrugs.

“And I am the one who offered.”

“Do you want me to be angry at you, Menzies?” It’s a genuine question, he’s no idea what Menzies is getting at. 

“If it would mean you’d stop antagonising Devenish then yes.”

“Why on earth would my annoyance with Devenish be any concern of yours?”

Menzies takes a step forward; Judd doesn’t move. “Because,” Menzies says, “though he’s complaining to me now, if you keep at it, he’ll complain higher. You’re so close, Judd. Don’t get yourself sunkered now.”

“Oh.” Judd folds his arms. _I see_. “So you’re protecting my interests?”

“Somebody has to,” Menzies snaps and then, more quietly: “And of course I can’t say I don’t want harmony.”

Ah yes, Menzies the musician. Judd doubles down on the metaphor. “Oh, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as harmony. Harmony would imply different notes allowed at the same time. You want what the rest of them want: to silence the discord.” 

Menzies runs a hand through his hair, dragging it out of hold. It makes him look younger. Just a boy losing his patience in the moonlight. “Have I ever tried to silence you?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure you’ll start to once you’re head of house.”

Menzies sighs. “I suppose you think that lack of faith is warranted.”

How bold, Judd thinks, that Menzies ever assumed to have Judd’s _faith_. At best he had Judd’s thanks when he ignored Bennett’s imprudent prattle; he’d never expected it would last. He’d always been waiting for Menzies to exercise his judgment against them. “You know the more I think about it the more I am angry at you.”

“Yes I thought so,” Menzies says quietly, infuriatingly calm now. He goes to sit on the sill of the open window. 

Judd half-follows him, stays standing in front of him like this is some bloody petition to a monarch, and hisses: “Because you _know_! You’ve probably always known and the absolute amorality of the thing doesn’t unsettle _you_ in the least. You don’t even believe in it. Barclay and Delahay think they’re upholding something; Devenish truly does believe that the civil service is noble; but you, you know none of it means anything, that it’s all just projection. And so you’re the worst of the lot.”

Backlit by the moonlight Menzies’ hair glows. “Of course that also applies to Bennett,” he says mildly.

It’s true and he knows it, by rights – at least before all this – he should have hated Bennett when they first met, but he hadn’t. 

“Don’t– not after what you’ve done to him. It’s a cheap shot.”

Menzies seems to have thrown his usual tight-lip to the wind; he sounds almost confessional. “It may not have been fair but it is true. At least I wanted to be head of house for more than just a title to wave in front of the foreign office.”

“Oh of course, you just want to continue the benevolent reign of Barclay.”

“Perhaps even more benevolent.” He smiles absently. “You never know, if I do end up a politician I might even be a Labour one just to vex you. Would you be able to hate me then?”

“Probably.” The Labour party is a mess; the ILP and the British Communists are the only ones worth the rose. Even Menzies would fit right in to their current wooly liberal sensibility.

Judd sits down next to him and gets Lenin out from the pocket where he’s been happily banging against his thigh. He places him on the sill between them. Menzies glances at him. 

“Do you need to bring it with you?”

“If he’s out of my sight he’ll get stolen. Thrown in the river probably. It wasn’t cheap.”

“Everyone’s asleep, Judd,” Menzies says softly.

Judd raises an eyebrow. “Not everyone.”

He’s about to say something about the honour of Menzies shirking his duty to talk to him when the next thing he knows is Menzies grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him out of the window frame. 

“There was a Master,” Menzies whispers, but Tommy can’t quite parse that over the thud of his pulse and the heat of how close Menzies is with Tommy pulled against him, pressing him back against the wall. He’s never even been tempted by Bennett – ludicrous as that seems now – but this, Menzies moving both of them without a second thought. Menzies reaching out and touching. Menzies still holding on to him. Strange how that’s what changes things, that Bennett always touching him had made no odds, but one lapse in Menzies’ control and Tommy himself is losing his.

Menzies looks up at him and Tommy must make a small movement, a helpless swaying forward, for Menzies’ breath catches and his hand squeezes Judd’s arm. 

The hush of the corridor has to be absolute but in the wall space between these windows Tommy can hear every breath from the both of them, every rustle of clothing where they touch. He wonders if this is what Bennett enjoys so much, chasing boys when it’s so dangerous to do so: the half-maddening tension of what just might be going to happen. Judd’s walked knives edges before, he’s a communist in a school of Tories, but this is wholly another danger. This time he’s not sure which is the bad side to fall. 

His anatomy seems to have made up its own mind, an ache that steals his focus. 

Menzies says, voice rough: “I’m sure he’s gone now,” and Tommy, stupidly, responds with, “Who?”

“The Master.”

 _Christ_. “Oh. Yes.” Tommy steps back and cranes his neck a little to look: the moonlit courtyard is empty, the curtains of the Masters’ rooms drawn. “Yes, he’s gone.”

Menzies slides out from the space Tommy’s left between them. His hands are back in his pockets, but there are two points of colour on his cheeks, washed almost grey in the half-light. “You get back to bed, I’ve another round to do.”

Judd summons up a mock salute and draws his dressing gown over the obscenity in his trousers as he turns to go. 

He couldn’t tell from that angle if Menzies is similarly afflicted, but there had been that roughness to his voice before so perhaps he is. Tommy hopes he is, or else he is liable to feel extremely foolish, like Bennett had always seemed, mincing around after Harcourt. Though of course Tommy has no illusions that Menzies is perfect, or even beautiful – though there’s something about him that Tommy hasn’t got the words for, something Bennett would know how to say. 

All of this is just too bloody confusing, too distracting. If he’d been younger perhaps he could brush his reactions off as proximity, the animal need for intimacy but he is seventeen and used to abnegation. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be able to stamp this nonsense out before it gets out of hand.

But then Menzies says his name and he half turns to meet the footsteps approaching his back, his hand coming up automatically to catch the thing Menzies presses into his chest and his fingers wrapping half around the cold metal of the bust of Lenin and half over the cool, soft skin of Menzies hand. He feels the sharp edges of Lenin through his shirt as Menzies presses hard enough to hurt. 

Menzies’ eyes flicker up to meet his, and with quite apart from himself Tommy raises his other hand to pull him in by the shoulder, crushing their mouths together clumsily. 

Doubtless Bennett has some knack for this, kissing boys, but Tommy’s only used to his usherette, and she’s the one who kisses him. He slides his hand up over Menzies’ collar until he reaches warm skin, his fingers curling around his neck and his thumb brushing his jaw, he uses the grip to bring Menzies closer and gets in answer a high noise, half gasp and half moan, and the soft yielding of Menzies’ mouth.

He less kisses than lets himself be kissed, Menzies, and again Judd thinks of Bennett, if he’d gone after Harcourt because he knew that Harcourt, like a girl, would be pliable. Tommy hadn’t known Menzies would be like this, he hadn’t thought about it at all, but now he has him it makes him wonder why. Menzies won’t even move the arm lying useless at his side, is only touching him where their hands hold Lenin and where their lips meet. If he weren’t leaning into the kiss Tommy would think he didn’t want it. _Gasping for it_ , he remembers and then thinks that at least it’s not a useful skill, Bennett’s sense for this sort of thing, or he might have to respect him for it. 

Then Bennett is pushed far from the front of his mind by Menzies trying to disentangle his fingers from Judd’s and extricate Lenin from between them. Judd relinquishes his hold to help but he can’t bring himself to tear away to look down and they end up fumbling him, dropping him. Time seems to stretch as Lenin falls, an awful pause as they come to terms with their fate.

When metal hits wood with a dull thud they each take an instinctive step back but parting slowly rather than springing free like the guilty schoolboys they are. 

Menzies, when Tommy summons the courage to look at him, seems to have aged in a moment, even despite the mess of his hair. He looks bone-tired and wan. 

“Go to bed, Judd.” He says it quietly, so quietly Tommy thinks for a moment he’s imagined it. 

“Menzies–” he starts.

“Now,” Menzies says, hard, and when Tommy steps forward, he takes a long step back. 

Judd snatches Lenin up from where he’d fallen, staring at the small dent that’s left as he straightens.

Menzies is looking out of the window again and Judd takes his dismissal, creeps off back to the dorm.

**Author's Note:**

> well. this is just the same fic shifted a half-metre to the left, really. they still have moonlit conversations, it's somehow longer and yet less explicit than the first one, and the POV's swapped. 
> 
> title is, as per, from Shakespeare. this time measure for measure.


End file.
